Live Area Control Center Traffic Complexity Forecast and What-if Analysis

AirTOP WIZer ACC brings the power of fast-time simulations to real-time operations. Acquiring real-world information, such as data on traffic, aircraft locations, weather, and more, this powerful connectivity tool, securely integrates with airport and air traffic control systems to provide detailed, up-to-the-minute forecasts of air traffic demand, traffic complexity, and controller workload. Forecast data is displayed to the user in a graphical interface (charts, tables, 2D and 3D views, etc.) to highlight when demand is forecasted to exceed capacity. These forecasts support ACC supervisors and flow managers to make real-time forecast and what-if analysis decisions.

What Makes AirTOP WIZer ACC Unique

Balance workload

Deliver warnings when the entry count, occupancy, or workload/complexity of a sector is forecasted to exceed some user-defined threshold.

Forecast and analysis

Provide air traffic flow and capacity management (ATFCM) options to either reduce demand or increase capacity, and display the results of executing such measures on the updated forecast, allowing the user to perform an interactive what-if analysis of the available options.

Improve operations

Model the full operational environment of any ACC or group of ACCs and provide complexity and controller workload measurements for all sector types (En Route sectors, TMAs, etc.), or for tower controllers.

Test environment

Dedicated testing environment, including a collection of unit tests, which allows for the system to be tested, validated and calibrated for operational use.

Features

Fast-Time Simulation Deployed in the Operations Room

AirTOP WIZer ACC can model the full operational environment of any ACC or group of ACCs. It provides complexity and controller workload measurements for all types of sector (En Route sectors, TMAs, etc.), or for tower controllers.

Testing Environment

AirTOP WIZer contains a dedicated testing environment, including a collection of unit tests, which allows for the system to be tested, validated and calibrated for operational use. Non-regression tests are based on the replay feature and on the profiling traces generated by the system when started in Test Mode and provide information about model validation, forecast quality, global performance of the software components on the background side as well as graphical performance of the WIZer Client. Additional procedures for manual testing are also part of the non-regression tests in order to test and stress the HMI of the WIZer Client.

Archive and Replay

AirTOP WIZer ACC includes one or several machines especially dedicated to data archiving. The archives can be accessed from a dedicated interface. The WIZer Replay feature allows the user to fully restore and reproduce the state of the system at a specific past point in time, playing back the reception of all received and archived input data. A specific simulation data archive is recorded from flight plan progress data. This independent data can be used in AirTOP even without the WIZer ACC module, allowing for post-ops analysis.

Environmental Factors

Any environmental condition that can impact the traffic complexity such as ATFCM measures, runway configurations, and weather.

What-if Analysis

The AirTOP WIZer ACC interface facilitates the comparison of the published/current environment with as many what-if environments as desired. The information displayed is continuously updated as new data becomes available. Some of the parameters displayed are:

• Sector and configuration opening and closing times
• Color indications of the KPIs (entry count, occupancy and workload/complexity, etc.)

System Performance

AirTOP WIZer ACC can run 24/7, with an availability in excess of 99.9%. Some reliability and availability is provided by various auto-correction, auto-recovery and calibration functionalities integrated into the system.

Traffic Complexity Forecast and Analysis

During operation, AirTOP WIZer ACC repeatedly conducts fast-time simulations of the current traffic situation to obtain a forecast for the next few hours. During the simulation, the software calculates the future air situation and logs all the relevant events (for example, sector entry) for each flight. It also logs the workload of each controller, which can be flexibly customized according to each customer’s own specificities. The WIZer ACC interface uses these logs to display the evolution in time of the required metrics, providing a visual feedback of the future situation.

Optimizer

AirTOP WIZer ACC proposes optimal sector opening schemes which can be added as one of the “what-if” opening schemes. The optimizer can be set to select from pre-existing airspace configurations or subset of “favorite” airspace configurations, according to user-defined criteria. The optimization can also take into account the current shifts schedule.

Input Data Processing

AirTOP WIZer ACC takes in input data in the form of flight progress messages (EFD, OLDI, etc.), radar tracks (CAT62), wind and storm forecasts, the current sector opening scheme and the currently activated scenarios or regulations. The AirTOP WIZer software is able to acquire input data and transmit output data via multiple interfaces:

• Flight progress messages
• Live track data / CPR messages
• NM data & services
• Current weather condition/ radar view
• Weather condition forecast
• Human resources and rostering plans
• Military airspace activation plans The WIZer architecture enables additional data links to be easily integrated by Transoft, such as a local flight data processing system (e.g., military flights), or custom flight CPR messages.

Aircraft Trajectories

Aircraft movements are calculated based on the performance characteristics built into the model, which may be based on BADA or on customized performance model, with the possibility to take into account temperature and wind conditions (for example, their impact on the climb profile). These movements can also be constrained by Letters of Agreement built into the operational model. Free Route Airspaces (FRAs) modeling is also supported.